For a brief time Mazeppa appears again to have wavered, perhaps touched by this display of loyal confidence on the part of a master he was about to betray. In his indecision he decided to summon a council of the Cossack notables, and himself proposed that a deputation be sent to Moscow to lay
* The above events are the subject of a famous scene in Tchaikowski's opera of "Mazeppa."
before the Tsar the grievances of the Ukraine. But Peter, growing suddenly suspicious, appears to have acted at this critical moment with the hastyviolence which so often marred his statesmanship. His reply to the Cossack representatives was to throw into prison the entire deputation, at whose head the hetman had placed his favourite nephew. At the same time one of the Tsar's ablest generals, Mentchikov, commanding the Russian troops stationed in Cossack territory, received strict orders to spare no effort to prevent any communication between the Swedes and Poles.
The tenor of these orders persuaded Mazeppa that his treacherous negotiations were known and he could hesitate no longer without endangering his own safetj'. Placing garrisons chosen from the Cossacks of his faction in Romni, Tchernigov and Batumin — thus securing important strategic points protecting his rear — he now advanced into Poland to join the Swedish armies, although keeping liis intentions secret from those of his followers of whose loyalty he had reason to be doubtful. On the shores of the Desna, he drew up his entire army in a hollow square and in an impassioned harangue set forth their common wrongs. Appealing to the loyalty of the Cossack nation, he made the most of Peter's conduct respecting the ominous military reforms, recalling the Tsar's contempt for the agreements which, since the days of the Hetman Bogdan, had united Moscow and the
Ukraine. But Mazeppa had either miscalculated the resentment which had been aroused by these measures, or, as appears more likely, the Cossacks hesitated to ally themselves with their ancient enemy, Poland. When thus called upon to forego at a few moments' notice the traditions and resentments of a life-time, they may have remembered that Mazeppa himself was of Polish origin. Their turbulent Orthodoxy caused them to recall all that their ancestors had suifered at the hands of the Catholic gentry and Jesuit leaders of the Polish court. The result of Mazeppa's ill-timed frankness was far different from his expectations. At first a grim silence greeted his eloquence, while murmurs of disapproval followed each new proposal. As he ended his appeal to Cossack prejudice, cries of "Treason" were heard on all sides. In the uproar that followed Mazeppa even appears to have had some difficulty in escaping from the violence of the Russian partisans among his excited followers.
With but two regiments remaining loyal, both belonging to his personal guard, his "invasion" of Poland became little better than a flight from the Ukraine. Of all the "host" of Cossack cavalry with whom he had promised to await his allies upon the shores of the Desna there remained but a handful of horsemen, while the main body of the Ukrainians and Cossacks returned homewards to make their submission to the Tsar's generals.
One consolation remained, however, to Mazeppa in his extremity. The famous Zaporogian Cossacks were by this time too deeply compromised by the wily hetman's intrigues to desert his cause and they now set forth in their usual tumultuous array to join Mazeppa's little army.